TheVolga Region is one of the big centres of the peasant movement. The
particularly urgent task confronting the workers’ party there is: to carry out
the independent class policy of the proletariat, while constantly explaining to
the peasant masses that they can win land and liberty only by breaking with
their customary leaders from among the Liberal landlord-Cadets, only by joining
with the revolutionary proletariat.

Itis to this task, too, that the election campaign of the workers’ party should
be wholly subordinated. For this very reason, blocs with the Cadets—which
in general are impermissible because of the whole position in principle of the
Social-Democratic Party as the party leading the class struggle of the
proletariat—are particularly harmful in the Volga Region. To show this
more clearly, let us take the example of a peasant deputy to the First Duma from
the Volga Region. This deputy is Mr. I. Zhilkin, a Trudovik elected from
Saratov Gubernia.

TrudovikZhilkin is now writing in the St. Petersburg Cadet newspaper
Tovarishch and defending blocs with the Cadets. But see how he
defends such blocs. In Tovarishch of December 17 he describes the
elections to the First Duma in Saratov Gubernia. The peasants elected their own
people, instinctively—with the true instinct of the working and exploited
people—distrusting the liberal landlord and bourgeois lawyer. In the
gubernia, when all the electors had gathered for the election of the Duma
deputies, the peasants comprised about two-fifths of the total.

(Letus recall that the total number of electors in Saratov Gubernia was 150. Of
these, 64 were from the peasants, 51 from the landowners and 35 from the
townsfolk. Mr. Zhilkin gives the number as 152 electors, perhaps adding
the workers’ curia.)

Thepeasant electors in the gubernia came up against “prominent”
Cadets like Mr. N. N. Lvov, “attached to the Central Committee of the
Cadet Party”. Among the electors from the uyezd towns some people proved
to be more to the left than the Cadets. And very rapidly, almost of itself, a
Left bloc was formed, an “Alliance of the Working People”, the germ
of the future Trudovik Group in the Duma.

Hagglingwith the Cadets for seats in the Duma began. The Cadets demanded
two-thirds of the seats for the Constitutional-Democrats, the “working
people” demanded the same for themselves. No agreement was reached. The
Cadets did not believe in the strength and solidarity of the alliance of the
working people. At the last election meeting, however, it turned out that the
candidates of the alliance obtained from 78 to 89 votes out of the
total of 152. “The chief candidates of the Cadets obtained from 50 to
67.”

Thenthe Cadets surrendered. They agreed to their party being in the minority in
the Duma. “The committee of the alliance of the working people agreed to
secure the election of two candidates under the Cadet flag: N. N. Lvov and
S. A. Kotlyarevsky. “And it was typical,” writes Mr. Zhilkin, “that
these candidates who had only obtained 59 and 67 votes at the election meeting,
received 111 votes at the poll.”

Yes,this is very, very typical. Only unfortunately Trudovik Zhilkin does not
understand the significance of the facts he reports.

Justthink: the left Alliance of the Working People, disposing of 78-89 votes
out of 152, i.e., the majority, secured the election of N. N. Lvov to
the Duma. And so Mr. Zhilkin, the Trudovik, defends blocs with the Cadets.

Doyou know, workers and peasants, what sort of a man N. N. Lvov is? He is a
landlord, one of the founders of the “Osvobozhdeniye
League”, i.e., one of the founders of the Cadet Party. For seven years he
served as a Marshal of the Nobility. In the Duma he belonged to the most Right
wing Cadets. In other words, he not only opposed the Social-
Democratic worker deputies and the Trudoviks, but even found that the whole
Cadet Party was too far to the left! He found that the Cadet Draconian
laws on assembly and the press were too liberal and the ruinous
compensation payment which the Cadet landlords proposed for the peasants
was a reform too generous to the peasants. The Cadets wanted to sell land
to the peasants at a just valuation, this just valuation to be arrived at
by a body with an equal number of representatives of the peasants and the
landlords and with the addition of representatives of t e government. One
peasant, one landlord, one police official—was this not a truly
beautiful example of Cadet justice! But to the landlord Mr. Lvov it seemed
altogether too liberal. Apparently he would have liked more police
officials on the local land committees.

ConsequentlyMr. Lvov delivered speeches in the Duma against the
peasants’ demand for land. During the period of the Duma Mr. Lvov hastened to
make his way by the back stairs to the powers that be in order to haggle over
ministerial seats for the liberal landlords in return for “curbing”
the Trudoviks and Social-Democrats in the Duma. That’s the sort of man he is,
this liberal landlord Lvov, elected to the Duma by the Trudoviks. And after the
dissolution of the Duma landlord Lvov had talks with Stolypin about entering
the Stolypin Cabinet!!

Inorder to talk more freely with Stolypin, Lvov left the Cadets and formed the
Party of Peaceful Plunder. The Cadets are now entering into a bloc with
this party. The newspaper Tovarishch, for which Mr. Zhilkin
writes, calls it a progressive and not a Black-Hundred party!

Whatis important for us is that Lvov was a Cadet when he entered the Duma. What
is important is that the Cadet landlord betrayed the peasants in the most vile
fashion, fighting against their demands in the Duma and even after the
dissolution of the Duma haggling for a ministerial seat with people who were
responsible for shooting and flogging masses of peasants.

Thatis the sort of Cadet landlords the Trudoviks elected to the Duma!

Letus suppose that at that time Mr. Zhilkin and the other Trudoviks
did not know what kind of an animal this Lvov
was. Let us suppose that Mr. Zhilkin & Co. made a mistake. One
cannot be condemned for making a mistake.

Verywell. But is it possible that at the present time Mr. Zhilkin does not know
how the Cadet landlords like Lvov have gone over from “people’s
freedom” to the Stolypin military-court Cabinet? Mr. Zhilkin does know
this; nevertheless he advises the Trudoviks and Social-Democratic
workers to enter into a bloc with the party of the liberal landlords and
bourgeois lawyers, with the Party of the Cadets.

Lvovis an example of the Cadet traitor, an example of the liberal landlord
party.

Zhilkinis an example of the unintelligent and vacillating Trudovik who trails
in the wake of the “liberal” landlords, incapable of opening the
eyes of the peasants, incapable of gaining a victory even when in the majority,
incapable of rallying the peasants to independent struggle.

Letall the class-conscious workers, all the Social-Democrats of the Volga
Region, use the example of Lvov and Zhilkin to teach the people.

Workers!Do you want to help elect to the Duma Cadets like the landlord Lvov,
who one day delivers orations on people’s freedom and the next day goes over to
the side of Stolypin?

Ifyou do not want this, reject all blocs with the Cadets, with this party of
“liberal” landlords. Call upon the peasants to support the
Social-Democratic Labour Party and not the Party of the
Constitutional-Democrats.

Peasants!Do you want once more to elect to the Duma “liberal”
landlords like the Cadet Lvov, who prior to the Duma promised you a land flowing
with milk and honey, but when in the Duma proposed a just valuation of the
landlords’ land by officials appointed by the landlords’ government? Do you want to
entrust defence of peasant demands to the liberal landlords and bourgeois
lawyers?

Ifyou do not want this, vote for the Social-Democrats, i.e., for the
workers’ party. Nowhere in the world has the Social-Democratic Labour Party
betrayed the interests of the ruined, impoverished, toiling and exploited
peasantry. Throughout the world the liberal bourgeoisie has deceived
the peasants fighting for land and liberty just as the Cadets like Lvov are
deceiving them in this country.

Thereis not and cannot be any other remedy against the wobbling of the
Trudoviks than a strong, class-conscious workers’ party that never departs from
the class standpoint. The peasants can win land and liberty only by marching
hand-in-hand with the class-conscious workers.

December 28, 1906

Notes

[1]
The article “The Working-Class Party’s Tasks and
the Peasantry” was written for the Samara legal Bolshevik newspaper
Samarskaya Luka (Samara River-bend). Lenin sent the
manuscript of the
article from St. Petersburg to the address of the editorial board of the
newspaper in Samara, but it was intercepted by the gendarmerie. The manuscript
was only found in 1929 among the archives of the
Samara provincial gendarmerie.